


Keeping Dangerous Friends

by Unbeta



Series: Things that origniated as promts [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Double standard Albus Dumbledore, Eavesdropping, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23972524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unbeta/pseuds/Unbeta
Summary: Tom is exploring the castle. However, he is waylaid by a conversation, which would later give him a perfect scapegoat.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Rubeus Hagrid
Series: Things that origniated as promts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728361





	Keeping Dangerous Friends

**Author's Note:**

> This came from a prompt that I saw years ago, don't know where or who but it stuck with me. Only recently did inspiration strike. The prompt was something like Tom overhears a conversation that he was not supposed to and it changes his life for the better
> 
> Though perhaps the intent was for him to move away from being Voldemort rather than this?

Tom was searching for somewhere to host his secret meetings with his knights. Somewhere that is out of the way and could be easily used to practise more esoteric magic, otherwise, he would most certainly not be in this mostly forgotten part of the castle. He heard voices, but he ignored them in favour of inspecting the cupboards to try and discover what this room’s earlier purpose was.

He picked out Hagrid, it was not hard his volume control needed much work. But it was not until the pair where at his door that he recognised Dumbledore. They walked past the door, and Tom caught the tail end of a protest. “He would never survive without me, he wouldn’t.”

His grammar lacked too, and Tom would have simply left if not for Dumbledore’s next words. “You know as well as I do that it is against the rules to keep such a pet, no exceptions.” It incensed Tom, yet here he might find proof that Dumbledore held a double standard. He would - and had- given Tom detention for trying to help the person next to him to understand the lesson yet here he was actively not doing anything while one of his Gryffindors was breaking school policy.

“Tom,” Tom shuddered at his name being invoked, “has that snake!”

“He is a parselmouth and exceptions are made.” How did they know about his darling Aurora? She had never left the common room in view of others, right now safely hidden inside his robes. “Technically it is a safe wild creature that could, if it so chooses, leave much like the centaurs. Yours, however, if anyone heard…” Dumbledore trailed off, but the implication was easy to follow, surely even the oaf would understand.

“But he doesn’t want to be going. He likes me.”

They began to draw out of hearing range. Tom hastened to cast various charms to continue to overhear and ensuring the pair did not notice Tom opening the door, Dumbledore was good at noticing people sneaking around. He felt cheated with his effort when he discovered they had entered a classroom a few doors down. His anti-discovery charms near useless now and he had missed part of the conversation. He placed his wand in the corridor and re-cast, linking them back to his original cast while he ensured that he had somewhere to hide should Dumbledore notice the listening charms.

“-Have a good life,” Dumbledore assured.

“Aye, but He won’t be happy.”

Tom frowned, was that about the ‘pet’ they had mentioned. What Pet? Oh, through the window Tom could see the open broom closets near the Quidditch pitch. A quick accio now and he could fly out of sight of any nearby windows before Dumbledore even entered this room. “But he would have space to roam, to grow and most importantly a chance to fall in love.”

“Ya think? I mean there ain’t any others in Britain, is there?”

“You must do what is best for him. It is not always easy and often people do not know what is best for them, blinded by wants and fantasy. He is in danger here. He is not free. And you could still visit him in the holidays.”

“Really, that might be nice. Can we wait ‘till then, so I can see him settling in?”

“Perhaps. We should consider doing the move sooner. The longer he is here the greater the risk of danger to everyone. But it is time for your next lesson.” - No, it wasn’t, the chime had not gone on the clock to denote one o’clock and the afternoon classes started at fifteen past to give those who venture into the grounds time to get to Divination, fools though those people are in Tom’s opinion. In this case, it alerted him that Dumbledore had, in fact, noticed his charm work. He cast a deliberately half-arsed finite at those in the room - to make them look older- and with the accio’d broom jumped out the window.

He got the broom started in mid-air, much like he’d had to back in his fourth year when he played seeker and during practice, Mulciber aimed a bludger not at Tom but his broom, and when it had snapped, he had done something similar; summoned an unused broom and got it going while falling. He learnt then it was easier to start a broom like that. He had investigated it, of course; the enchantments sort of picked up the falling motion as high-speed flying and would start quicker if you tried to stop motion which it thought you had initiated. His terror at dying had saved him from it. He swooped around the castle and entered through the first open window he spotted. He dismissed the broom. It was a school one and enchanted to return to the shed, so he paid it no mind.

The room he entered was unfamiliar. It had vaulted ceilings, toilet stalls and sinks. He had never been in here and it seemed empty and desolate. He stood admiring the structure of the room. The pillars that rose to the roof where magnificently sculpted. The windows had stain glass panels which were better than the muggle church near him but worse than the prefects’ bathroom. He briefly wondered if this might have been an old prefects’ bathroom, forgotten behind some portrait or wall with a long-forgotten password that he might discover so he could have his meetings here. There was certainly enough space, and it was not high up in the castle - the third floor he guessed. But then, which window had he entered by? Was this the second floor since he remembered starting nearer the ceiling.

It took him longer than it should have to realise what was wrong in this bathroom, other than the oddity of the circular sink formation, was that it was missing any urinals. This was a girl’s bathroom. It was gorgeous - no wonder girls often stayed here far longer than he ever thought anyone would want to. It was cleaner too, more like the prefects’ bathroom than the usual male toilets. He wondered if he could leave without anyone noticing he had been in here. A quick revealing charm confirmed he was alone in here, but there were people outside the room.

So long as they moved off soon, he would get to class easily. They did not, and well it was not unheard of for him to be late to potions because he had lost track of time in his researching. If he had transfiguration, he would be re-summoning that broom despite the suspicious behaviour that would be to Dumbledore who would now be searching for a student on a broom near the castle. He casts on himself a notice-me-not and a disillusionment charm as he investigates the room. He would never be in here again and was curious about what other differences there might be.

It was only as he got to the sinks, with mirrors, did he stop in confusion. Someone had written in, was that lipstick? Whatever they used it clumped weirdly on the glass and looked to have been there a while since he could only barely make out the: ‘firsties this sink never works don’t bother complaining - we already tried that’ Curious, what type of magic could make a single sink unusable? It took Tom only a few moments of observation of the taps to come to a simple conclusion. This sink was decorative.

Then a moment of consideration at the snake design around the tap that was solely on this sink and not the others to link it to another fact. The Slytherin name died out centuries ago and often the genes passed down the female line. Most of the non-male lines had hidden the talent and anything connecting them back because of the bad, incorrect, opinions of those who did not end up in Slytherin. Statistically speaking the biggest producer of dark wizards was Gryffindor, the unafraid to dabble in what others considered dark or insane. Though Slytherin sat not far behind. Meanwhile, if you looked to the infamous dark wizards they mostly, in the last five centuries, came from Ravenclaw, starting with Morgana opposed by Merlin of Slytherin house. People forgot that. He had once heard a first year on the train ‘hoping to get Hufflepuff like Merlin,’ and nobody corrected him. Tom had considered correcting him but decided that they would not trust Tom on the matter in his third year Slytherin hand-me-down looking robes.

That aside the tendency for females to carry on the line, but not the name, meant that whenever renovations took place unknown descendants of Slytherin could be there to ensure that the chamber entrance is moved - and why not hide it from the males as they tended to either be squibs or threaten to set the basilisk loose in fits of anger? Which was not what Tom was planning. He was planning a glorious removal of the unworthy. His feat was not in anger, but a decision made of careful forethought. He would do his predecessors proud and finish their work in cleansing the castle.

“ _Open_.” He hissed, and it did. He wondered briefly if there might be another exit that he could use to perhaps turn up in the forbidden forest - for surely a basilisk needs to eat and there is no guarantee that a parselmouth is here. He had at most fifteen minutes before class. And if he missed it, he could claim he passed out in his dorm room _again_ and Slughorn would chuckle and suggest he stop using pepper-up potions since clearly that’s why he crashed twice this month rather than his now ended search for something undocumented in anything but legend. It would not be legend much longer and instead be his legacy.


End file.
